Mark Cassino Photography - Mark's Blog

In the Allegan Forest. There are a couple of places along 125th Avenue, north of the river, where folks come to shoot stuff. Most famously would be the bluff overlooking the river, where there is sizable pile of ash from numerous bonfires, and the ground is covered with the brass butts of shotgun shells. But a short distance north of there is a stand of planted white pines, all standing together regular, like a bunch of soldiers in formation.

Frying Pan

One unfortunate tree in this bunch was singled out to be the backdrop for target practice. A few years ago I noticed a large hook – like what you would use to hang planters in the garden – screwed into the side of this tree. Judging from the litter around the trunk, more than a few TV’s, LP’s, milk jugs, and other unwanted household items had met their demise here - hung on the hook to be a target. Or to be more positive about it – these items gave their owners a few more moments of pleasure at the end of their existence.

Anyhow, last spring I found the tree snapped in two, just a few feet below that hanging hook. It got so shot up that it just broke when the wind rose. It’s fascinating to look at close up – wood, peppered with lots of brass and lead. I figured that was that, and folks would move onto another tree. As expected, the debris under the tree stopped accumulating.

Passing by there this week, I noticed that someone had found the frying pan that was in the debris pile, and stuck it onto the broken tree truck to get in a little bit more of target practice. I was shooting one of my last rolls of Kodak HIE infrared film, and took a few snaps of the stand of trees. Here’s the best of the bunch.

September in Michigan is sometimes the last month of summer, and sometimes the first month of fall. This year summer clearly hang on for many extra and welcomed days.

The remnants of hurricane Ike rolled through the area early in the month and dropped 8 to 12 inches of rain (depending on location.) Following it, a summery weather pattern settled in, with sunny days, 80 degree temperatures, and cool crisp evenings.

I missed this first part of the month, since I was away. As a result I tended to linger a bit over the last week, enjoying some of my favorite places in the Allegan Forest. Even in the last days of September, the woods were lush and green, with almost no sign of autumn.

The dragonflies have changed, though. As the seasons unwind, new species emerge and old ones drop by the wayside. There are, of course, some points on continuity – the green darners still lumber over the meadows, as they have since late April. But the Blue Dashers, Twelve Spotted Skimmers, and Halloween Pennants are now gone. The Dot Tailed Whitefaces, Calico Pennants, Spangled Skimmers, and Clubtails of all stripes have long been absent. Now the Autumn Meadowhawks (formerly called Yellow Legged Meadowhawks) are on the ascendancy. They will stay on till the hard freezes come, the last of the dragons for this year. White faced Meadowhawks are also still abundant, and I saw (but did not photograph,) a few Carolina Saddlebags.

The fields around the temporary marsh are now waist high will grasses. The triangle of walnut trees that stands next a crumbling building foundation is now thin and almost leafless. The apple tree next to a pile of field stones has dropped most of its fruit, and has also given up most of its leaves. The ironweed and bee Baum are now brown stalks capped with seed heads. The patch of wild strawberry that carpets the northern end of the field is starting to turn reddish brown. Bright oak and maple forest that surrounds the field remains vibrant green – not a trace of fall color yet to be seen.

The rain has fortified the temporary marsh. It’s hard to believe that two summers ago I walked through it, and aside from one small, muddy patch of cat tails, the marsh was dry. This year there are no cat tails – I think they drowned as the place where they once stood is now under several feet of water. The edge of the marsh is now higher than it usually is after the spring snow melts.

Several splashes greet me as I near the edge of the marsh – frogs and toads are now abundant in this field. One fearless leopard frog bucked the trend, and jumped out of the water and towards me as I was photographing dragonflies. I managed a few shots of it, as it worked its way into the pine forest that presses again the eastern end of the marsh. 

The marsh was also the home to lots of white-faced meadowhawks. Autumn meadowhawks already dominate the higher ground to the north, but right at the edge of the marsh the whitefaces still hold their own. They are not particularly cooperative about being photographed – since they tend to land on the grass stalks several yards out into the marsh, but a few land on dried raspberry branches or other plants a few feet into dry land, giving me the chance to take their photos.

I’ve tried to visit some of my favorite places in Allegan this last week. Unfortunately, the fields north of the river, which were rich with dragonflies in the spring and early summer, have been mown, and are now more or less lifeless. The same hold true for the field along 46th Ave. The low levee near the Swann Creek dam was flooded last week – the water from the creek was running over it and into the swamp to the east. But that area finally dried out late this week.

One area of note was at the end of a small two-track, cutting into the woods east of 46th Avenue. It’s always a good spot for dragonflies in the spring and fall, but for reason doesn’t have much of a population in the summer months. Here I found several Autumn Meadowhawks, and to my surprise a female widow skimmer. Widows are among the earliest dragons to appear, and I haven’t seen one locally since July. Odd to see one flying around in the last days of September – but there it was. I guess that, like me, she decided to just hang on a little bit more. 

More images:

Here are a few more shots from my trip last week. We spent a day at Monticello, which was every bit as interesting as I hoped it would be. The weather wasn’t the greatest - a cool steady drizzle on a rather gloomy and cloudy day. After the first hour or so I put the camera away. But here is one shot of a portico near the estate’s garden:

Here’s a close up of a bubble in a glass window, Williamsburg, Virginia:

A few shots with the Vivitar IC101 Panoramic Focus Free Camera… A shopping cart on the Mall, Washington, D.C.

That’s probably half of the images I decided to cull out from the IC101.

Summer’s over and autumn is cooking – and I’m just standing here looking…

It’s been a while since I posted – mostly because I’ve been on the road for the last couple of weeks, wandering through Virginia, D.C., Maryland, and New Jersey. It wasn’t a photographic trip, and I don’t have a bunch of new images to upload.

The putative reason for the trip was to attend the artist reception at the Maryland Federation of Art American Landscapes exhibit. The show looked great (as usual) with some really excellent pieces on display. Lenny Campello, the DC area art guy and blogger who juried the show, was on hand for the reception as well.

Early on in the trip I tired of carrying around an SLR, and so reverted to the smallest and lightest camera I had on hand – which was the Vivitar IC 101 panoramic focus free. My camera’s mechanics are increasingly wonky – sometimes failing to advance the film and more often than not, failing to fire when the shutter button is depressed. (Though it inevitably fires *sometime* shortly after pressing the button.)Here’s a shot of some shrubbery in Washington, D.C.

Maybe more later…